


Do you ever feel as if the horizon is always behind you?

by krebkrebkreb



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Fix-it, Gen, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:17:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krebkrebkreb/pseuds/krebkrebkreb
Summary: Amy can't handle how powerless she feels after dropping Vincent van Gogh back in his own time.Originally posted 12th June, 2010 to livejournal.





	Do you ever feel as if the horizon is always behind you?

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on my livejournal, but I'm making an effort to archive all of my fic in the same place. Apologies; I haven't been part of the Doctor Who fandom in many years.
> 
> Lightly edited.

Amy spends two hours in her locked room in the TARDIS, crying. She would use the word weeping instead, but that makes her think of angels and the dark and Vincent is someone who should be remembered in the light. It also makes her feel a little foolish, a little like she's being overdramatic about a genuine hurt.

When the two hours are up, not long enough to mourn but just long enough that her tears are starting to dry before they can leave her eyes, the Doctor knocks on her door, steaming cup of tea in hand.

"Amy," he says, knuckles clacking against the worn wood with its flaking white paint, "I have it on very good authority that good tea fixes everything."

She gets up and clicks the lock open, slinking back to her bed before the Doctor can turn the doorknob and push his way into the room. His step is careful but chipper even as his eyes are filled with the sadness of piled up centuries.

"How do you do it, Doctor?" she asks, accepting the warm china cup of tea as he hands it to her but not yet drinking.

He sits beside her on the bed's rumpled sheets, close but not too close as to be considered improper by him even if not her, making motions urging her to drink the tea. "I don't think I'm certain what you mean."

"How do you go on being _you_ , knowing--" She falters and her hands shake, cup clanking dangerously against the saucer. The Doctor quickly covers her hands with his own.

When their eyes meet she has the briefest physical sensation of complete disorientation, like falling, like she doesn't know where she is and the man beside her is someone she has never met before. It passes before a full moment is over and she's left feeling absolutely, terribly bereft.

"You get used to it, after a time." His smile is self-sure and entirely fake.

"Do you really?"

The smile falls, the act broken. "No." His fingers tighten around hers which in turn tighten around the cup. "Drink your tea," he says, letting his hands fall into his lap.

She obliges, taking a long swallow and immediately feeling better. The weight of what she saw in his eyes diminishes with the slightly bitter, slightly sweetened taste of the tea and with it goes a little bit of her sadness for the tragedy that will be, that is, that _was_ Vincent.

"It's stupid," she says after she lowers the cup.

He bristles. "I think that's very good tea."

" _No_ ," she says, drawing out the 'o' as if his misunderstanding her words is possibly the greatest offense the man could have committed. "I didn't mean the _tea_. I meant that we can't help Vincent..." Halfway through her sentence the Doctor can see the thought forming in her mind, solidified into an idea by the time she trails off. "We _can_ help Vincent."

"No. Amy, Amy, Amy, no. We _can't_." The sadness is back in his face even if it's not in hers and he looks at her mournfully. "You know we can't."

"Do I? We took him to Paris in 2010, why can't we take him on a few more little trips?"

She sets the tea on the night table beside the bed, the delicate china clattering dangerously, before she turns back to the Doctor. Her brows are knit together and her lips are pursed in the manner that lets him know she isn't accepting "no" as an answer.

"Doctor," she says and the word is heavy with meaning.

Her conscious mind doesn't, _can't_ know about Rory, about who he was to her and why or even that he's gone now, but her unconscious self is still mourning him and the Doctor can't find it in himself to give her another person to mourn for.

He squeezes the bridge of his nose and shakes his head, already having given in. "This is a _bad idea_ ," he says carefully.

She brightens, tear stains still covering her cheeks. "You'll do it?" It sounds like a question but they both hear it as the statement it is.

"Come on, Pond." He pops to his feet, spinning around to hold out a hand to her. "We have a passenger to pick up!"

Amy clasps his hand and grins, attributing the brief stabbing, terrible feeling she has in her chest to the thought of the fate Vincent will have. Could have had. Won't have anymore.

 

The TARDIS materializes right by the house they left not three hours ago. Three hours by her recall. Except when the Doctor pushes open the TARDIS door and hears his own voice drifting out of the window it doesn't seem that they've left at all.

" _Back inside_ ," he says with equal parts embarrassment and authority, pushing Amy backwards into the console room.

She lifts a delicate eyebrow at him. "Something wrong?"

"I. Well." He grins, embarrassed, and rubs at the back of his neck with his right hand, using the other to gently steer her further from the door. "I seem to have gotten the time wrong."

A dozen different ideas of what could be happening outside the TARDIS flash through Amy's mind, none of them good. They arrived too early and he's not there. Too late, and he's not there in a different way, a worse way.

He sees the question that comes with the horror in her eyes and regrets the coltish way he phrased that.

"No, no! Not-- it's only been a few-- we're a few minutes early. Hours early. I heard him offering us the portrait." He rubs her arm with the same forced smile from before. "Come on now. We'll just pop forward exactly two hours and nineteen minutes so we've arrived exactly after we've left and not before."

The second attempt is much closer in time even if not quite where they should be in _space_. Amy pokes the Doctor in the forehead. "I thought you were getting better at this piloting thing. Do we need to go pick up River so she can show you how it's done?"

Third time is the charm and when Amy shoves the door open she catches sight of Vincent's back in the distance. "Hey! Van Gogh!" she shouts, the "gh" catching in the back of her throat.

"Amy?" he asks, spinning around. Her heart sticks in her throat much the same way his name did.

She surges forward, the distance between them like nothing, clutching at his shoulders and kissing him swiftly without thinking about it.

"Come travel with us for a little while," she says when she pulls back.

"Okay," he says. He looks a little stunned. Quite happy.

His smile is wide and she kisses him again, just because she can. "Okay," she repeats, grinning, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach that she doesn't understand, that tells her this isn't how it is supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on twitter: @krebshouting


End file.
